WADE WINGLER: Welcome
to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian
Norton, Director of Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a
show in which we address your questions about assistive technology, the
hardware, software, tools and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead
more independent and fulfilling lives. Have a question you’d like answered on
our show? Send a tweet with the hashtag
#ATFAQ, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or send us an email at
tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has
questions, and we have answers. And now here’s your host, Brian Norton.

BRIAN NORTON: Hello
and welcome to ATFAQ episode 96. My name
is Brian Norton, and I’m the host of the show.
We are so happy you take some time to tune in with us this week. We have a great lineup of assistive
technology questions today, before we jump into those, I want to take a moment
to go around the room and introduce the folks who are sitting with me. I’m mixing this up because people have done
some musical chairs with me today. Josh
is here, the manager of clinical assistive technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. He’s also the host of Assistive Technology
Update. You want to say hi to folks?

JOSH ANDERSON: Hi
everybody. Gotta keep Brian on his toes sometimes.

BRIAN NORTON: That’s
right. We also Belva Smith, our vision
team lead here at Easter Seals Crossroads.
You want to say hi?

BELVA SMITH: Hey
everybody.

BRIAN NORTON: Excellent. So for folks who are new listeners, I would
to talk a little bit about how the show works.
Throughout the week, we receive feedback and come across various
assistive technology questions. We put a
show together and sit around here in a panel and try to answer those questions
as best we can. We have a variety of
ways for folks to ask us questions. If
you are listening and have a question, we would love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line
at 317-721-7124. Or send us an email at
tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or send
us a tweet with hashtag ATFAQ. Those are
the places that we get our regular questions.
As we get questions, we are also looking for feedback as well. We are going to take time to try to answer
some questions that we’ve gotten these past couple weeks. We realize that we only know what we know,
and we would love to hear from you guys because you may have some more
experience in different areas that we do.
Please give us a call, we would love to hear from you. Chime in, provide feedback, and we will
include that in our show as well.

If you are looking for our show, obviously the folks are
listening, you found it, but if you have other folks were interested you think
would be interested, point them to places like iTunes, stitcher, Google play
store, or they can go to our website, ATFAQshow.com. They can find our show and downloaded there.

I want to make one plug for something that’s upcoming with
the INDATA Project here shortly. On May
8, from 11 to 4 PM, we are going to be hosting a webinar for web
developers. If you are a web developer
or do any kind of web development on the web, creating webpages or whatnot, we
have Dennis Lembry joining us on May 8.
He’s well known and famous in the area of accessibility, and he’s going
to be joining us for a full day webinar.
We are going to dig into different types of things that go into creating
accessible content on the web. That’s
3:49 PM on May 8. You can find more
information about that webinar Easter Seals Crossroads/A11Y, A one one Y. Check that out, and if you are interested,
register and we look forward to seeing you on May 8.

BELVA SMITH: Hey
Brian, you want to take a second and do a brief rundown on what INDATA Project
is for our listeners?

BRIAN NORTON: The
podcast ATFAQ, also our Assistive Technology Update, and accessibility minute
podcast, they are all produced in and through the INDATA Project. The INDATA Project is Indiana’s assistive
technology act. Every state and
territory has a project similar to ours.
We don’t all do the same things, but we are the Indiana assistive
technology act. If you’re looking for
one in your state, you can go to EasterSealsTech.com/states. You can put in your state, look up the state
AT program, and it will tell you who does what we do in your state. Really, the primary purpose of the INDATA
Project is twofold. The first thing we
do is provide information and outreach.
We are helping folks understand and know about assistive technology, so
we spent a lot of time in front of folks educating them about what assistive
technology is, how it works, how it will help, and pointing people to resources
if they have an accommodation need. The
other thing we do is we work hard to get people’s hands on assistive technology. We do that in a variety of ways. Really, three specific ones I’ll highlight
for you. The first is our demo and alone
library program. We’ve mentioned that
quite frankly on a show as a way to get your hands on and test some of the
things we talk about on the show.
Essentially the loan library is a great place for folks to borrow
equipment for 30 days. Consider when you
go to the library to check out a book, it works in much the same way. You can check out a computer with adaptive
software, an accessible ramp, and other types of low tech, high-tech, different
types of devices and technologies, and borrow them for 30 days to figure out if
they are something that you’re interested in and think it would be helpful for
you day in and day out. The second thing
we do is we have a reuse program where we take in donated assistive technology
and computers, and then we give those away to folks here in the state of
Indiana who have a document disability.
They can fill out an application and we work hard to figure out how to
reuse some of that technology that folks have that they may not have a need for
anymore, for whatever reason. The third
thing we do is we have an alternative financing program where we recognize that
a lot of the folks we work with may not have a funding source or the financial
means to be able to purchase some of this technology. Through the alternative financing program, we
offer low interest extended term loans where folks can then purchase their own
assistive technology. Folks can borrow
between $500 and $35,000 to do something as simple as by an iPad with an app,
or do a home modification, vehicle modification, and those kinds of
things. It’s important to recognize and
understand that we are the Indiana assistive technology act. In order to do that in your state, if you are
from another state, you would have to go to your state AT act and find out what
types of services. We all do things a
little bit differently. The two tenets
are there: outreach and information, and working hard to get people’s hands on
equipment or that acquisition piece of it.
Again, we all do it in different ways, have different policies and
procedures to make that work. EasterSealsTech.com/states
would drive you back to your state AT act.

BELVA SMITH: Right. Your state AT act won’t be called INDATA
Project. That’s just the acronym we put
together and came up with the name. It’s
basically just the state’s assistive technology act.

BRIAN NORTON:
Exactly. Good plug. I don’t think we cover that often enough for
folks to understand that that’s a really good resource. Is not just to get your hands on equipment
before information and if you have a need, reach out to those places and they
can help put you in contact with resources in your state to be able to help
with whatever your particular needs you have.
Great question.

***

[8:06] Question 1 – Smartvision 2 Smartphone

***

BRIAN NORTON: Without
further ado, we’re going to jump into the first question today. This came in an email from the Jacques. He lives in New Orleans and would like to
know more about the Smartvision 2 phone and wanted to know specifically if it
could be used for texting, and also what cell phone carriers carry the phone
itself. We mentioned this phone a couple
of weeks ago, I think right after we got back from ATIA. We were talking to the manufacturer, Iris AT,
if I remember correctly. A fairly new
phone, built from the ground up specifically for folks who are blind or low
vision. It’s actually a smart phone, not
something that has software overlaid onto a phone you can buy just
anywhere. You have to buy the Smartvision
2 from Iris to use it, because it’s built from the ground up, specifically for
folks who are blind or visually impaired.

BELVA SMITH: So it
has all the basic applications that any of your smart phone has. You have your phone, texting, email,
calendar, alarm clock calculator, contacts.
We also have access to all the Google play store apps as well. That tells me that it is an android OS. The particular when you are asking about, the
Smartvision 2, has the capability of GPS navigation that included as well as
scanning and performing OCR. OCR is
optical character recognition. What that
means for a person who is blind or visually impaired is that if they get something
can should to them that is in printed format, obviously they can’t see it to
read it, but they can use the phone then to capture that text and have it read
back to them. From what I found in doing
the research, it looks like AT&T, Cricket, Consumer Cellular, Cellular One,
and T-Mobile. For us here, I think
T-Mobile just merged with somebody.

BRIAN NORTON: Is it
Sprint? I’m not sure.

JOSH ANDERSON: It’s
still in the works. It hasn’t happened.

BELVA SMITH: I would
say for this particular listener, probably the best thing you could do is
contact a couple of your providers that are local and asked them if they would
carry the phone. More than likely, you
are not going to have a new trouble. It
seems like all the major ones are willing to support it.

BRIAN NORTON: It’s a
GSM network. For AT&T and Verizon,
Verizon is not, I don’t believe, a GSM network.
It doesn’t work on Verizon phones, it will work on AT&T phones. I guess in my mind, those are the two major
players. When you talk about cellular
phones, look for AT&T or GSM networks or ask your phone company if they are
GSM network.

BELVA SMITH: For us
here, Consumer Cellular, we also talked about the jitterbug phone not too long
ago. They are the primary carrier or
service provider for the jitterbug. They
tend to have lower cost packages or more affordable packages than, say,
AT&T or Cricket.

JOSH ANDERSON: I
think a lot of those, you pay for what you use.
If you don’t need unlimited data, you don’t need a little bit of stuff,
you pay as you go and it’s a little bit cheaper.

BRIAN NORTON:
Right. If you go to their
website, Irie-AT.com, you can look under smart phones and tablets, and then you
can see the different networks. They
have 40 or 50 different networks. It’s
actually quite a few. Take a look at
their website, Irie-AT.com, and you can find that there. It’s a pretty interesting phone. Not an overlay, not software that you low to
the phone that you bought or have. This
is a phone that you would buy and use, and it looks like it’s a pretty
extensive phone.

BELVA SMITH: It’s an
android phone, in my understanding, that they have. That’s the beauty of android. If you want to call it a beauty, it could be
a pain, the fact that it can be customized to the way you want it.

BRIAN NORTON:
Right. I’ve looked up the price,
$889 to the company. I don’t believe you
can get anywhere else.

BELVA SMITH: You
can’t.

BRIAN NORTON: You
can’t go to AT&T and that I want this phone. You have to buy from them and go to AT&T
or go to your carrier and say I’d like this phone added to my account. There is a couple of steps that would have to
be navigated to make it work. Hopefully
the answer the question. It does to text
messaging and it’s available on a lot of different networks. Check out the website to look at that. I would love to know if any of our listeners
are using the phone.

BELVA SMITH: I was
going to say, please contact us if you do get it and you are using it and let
us know if you love it or hate it or what you think about it.

BRIAN NORTON: That’s
the kind of feedback we love, because you try lots of things in our
program. We would love to know how it
compares to other things that we’ve tried.
We are recommending equipment for folks all the time and would love to
know if it works well so that we can add it to a list of the things we might
recommend for folks.

JOSH ANDERSON:
Especially somebody who uses it on a daily basis. We are using it here or there or with folks,
but a lot of those things we don’t use day in and day out. So what are some of the frustrations or great
things that come out of doing that?

BRIAN NORTON: What
are the pros and cons? If you can send
us a list cut that would be great. A
couple ways to reach out to us, one would be our listener line, 317-721-7124. Or send us an email at
tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We would
love to know if you guys have had experience with this phone, tell us what you
think, we are very interested in that.

***

[14:13] Question 2 – Ability to read sheet music

***

BRIAN NORTON: Our
next question is, I am an avid trombone player, but my vision has slowly been
decreasing over the past several years.
At this point, I can no longer read sheet music. This had made playing my trombone very
difficult. Do you have any suggestions
for how I can access my sheet music again?

BELVA SMITH: I had an
accommodation that was similar. It
wasn’t a trombone. I believe it was a
trumpet them a person was playing. We
were able to — he still had enough vision that we were able to get all of his
music into electronic format, and we were able to just use an iPad on a floor
stand in front of them. That way if he
stood up, he could still see it, or if he was sitting down, he could still see
it. That worked out great for us. He also – I quickly went to throw in that he
did some recording. We did it with him
in the actual — we use the same iPad with them in the recording studio, and
the iPad outside the window. He was
still able to see it. He still had some
usable vision, but with the magnification that’s built into the iPad, we were
able to make it work for him.

BRIAN NORTON: A
couple of questions with that is did you scan, take pictures of it? How did you get the sheet music into the
iPad?

BELVA SMITH: He was
able to find the sheet music online and get it downloaded. Again, that’s going to be different with
every situation. Another option would be
to capture it, but my fear is with capturing it, you are probably going to lose
some of the quality, making it not as clear.
He was able to get his stuff downloaded.

BRIAN NORTON:
Interesting. The other thing I’ve
run across in the years of doing this job, one is called Limewire?

JOSH ANDERSON: Lime
Lighter.

BRIAN NORTON: Why am
I calling it Limewire?

BELVA SMITH: Because
there used to be a service called LimeWire, but that’s gone. It was a bad thing.

JOSH ANDERSON: It’s
Lime Lighter.

BRIAN NORTON: Lime
Lighter.

JOSH ANDERSON: Yes.

BRIAN NORTON:
Essentially what you do with this is you can scan in your music. It puts it — it’s an all in one computer,
but it’s one of those touchscreen computers.
Once you get it in there, it’s a 24 inch monitor, and you can get a
stand for it so it will stand up for you as you play your instrument. You have a foot pedal to go backwards and
forwards, so you can set your own pace for how fast it scrolls to the
music. In addition to that, because it’s
a touchscreen system, you can go in and edit the music if you maybe have to
move things up a few measures or move them back if you measures. You can edit the music sheets right then and
there and write your own notes and save them, so that when you play in an
orchestra or band or whatever you’re doing, you have that available to you in
that place.

BELVA SMITH: That
when you said you can just scan your music right into it?

BRIAN NORTON: You go
ahead and scan it.

JOSH ANDERSON: It
works with any scanner. Or you can
download those music.xml files or something of that sort.

BELVA SMITH: How
would he find this? Google it?

BRIAN NORTON: It
available three company —

JOSH ANDERSON: It’s
through DancingDots.com is where you can find out more about it and find
it. I think it runs around $3000.

BRIAN NORTON: Yeah,
it’s expensive.

JOSH ANDERSON: But if
music is your passion or your career, it’s an all-in-one that has everything
you need. You could probably do what
Belva was saying, maybe hook up a foot switch to the iPad a little bit, but
then you are looking at a lot more insulation and more room for user error. Whereas if this quit working, you could just
call the company and they would be able to help you through the process.

BELVA SMITH: Right.

BRIAN NORTON: What I
love about it is the foot pedal piece, because a lot of your instruments, your
hands are tied up. You don’t have an
opportunity, especially with brass instruments, to take your hands off of your
instrument to keep the music going and flowing.
With that foot pedal, you are going backwards and forwards and can move
all around that particular song sheet to get to where you are. That makes it really helpful.

We have one in our loan library. We have available for loan here in Indiana if
you are interested in trying that stuff out.
You may also check, just like we talked about before earlier in the
show, contact your local assistive technology act and see if through their demo
or loan library they would have a similar device for you. I know that’s definitely a piece of it. Belva, along with the same thing of using an
iPad, you could probably just use — if you are able to get the music online,
you could essentially hook up a 24 inch all-in-one computer and do what you are
doing with it just the same as the iPad.

BELVA SMITH: You
could also use an Apple TV and bring it, produce it onto a 65 inch TV if you
wanted to.

BRIAN NORTON: Right. I recently read a story about a lady in
Chicago with the symphony, and she had this issue of trying to get access to
sheet music. She couldn’t do it and it
took a while, but I’m not sure exactly what they landed on as far as the
accommodation for her. It’s something
that’s an issue for a lot of folks, age-related, low vision, or if you have a
visual impairment, that comes along with getting access to that. If it’s your love and passion, I would hate
to see that taken away from folks.

***

[19:58] Question 3 – App Showdown: Cortana vs. Siri

***

BRIAN NORTON: Our
next question is our app showdown. Today
we are going to be talking about Cortana versus Siri, talking about some of the
comparisons and features between the two.
Siri has been around for a lot longer, at least mainstream for a lot
longer than Cortana, though Cortana has been around for a little while in
Windows 10 and other places. Thoughts on
any of that?

BELVA SMITH: As you
just said, because she’s been around longer, Siri is a little bit smarter. But if you compared to some of the other was
assistants, she’s not so smart. Today
we’re just talking about Cortana and Siri.
In comparison with Cortana, she does seem to be a little smarter. However, if you think about it, what do you
want your voice assistant to do on your phone?
You want it to be able to let you set reminders, help you make a phone
call, help you send a text, send an email, or place a call – did I already say
that? Honestly, as far as performing the
task, it’s an up or down. If you want
information, you are going to get better information from Siri than
Cortana.

But I was playing with Cortana this afternoon. I would ask Siri, “Send Todd a text.” And because I’ve been using Siri forever, and
she’s very well familiar with who Todd is, it would just happen. But then Cortana, because I just started
using it, it’s like, “Todd, oh, do you want to send it to Todd’s mom Shery, or
to Todd –” asking me for more information so that it could get to know exactly
what I wanted to do. Honestly, I like
the voice of Cortana, and I think Cortana seems to be a little more
responsive. I don’t know about you all,
but with me, on my phone, Siri can be contrary.
Sometimes I’ll push the button to bring her up, and she just will come
up. Or show, by go away really
quick. I did not notice that with
Cortana. The minute I touch that
microphone with Cortana, she was ready to assist. I also really appreciate the settings that
you have with Cortana. You have very
little that you can configure with Siri.
Siri just pretty much does what she does. But with Cortana, in the menu settings, you
have a lot of options that you can configure.
Cortana can actually make reservations for you at a restaurant, Siri
can’t do that. When I ask when the Cubs
were going to play again, Cortana — which I was surprised by — not only told
me when they were going to play, but kind of gave me a quick rundown of their
complete schedule, which I thought was nice.

JOSH ANDERSON: Did
Cortana read those to you? Or did it
just take you to a website?

BELVA SMITH: It’s
kind of back and forth. Yes, it did read
it to me.

JOSH ANDERSON: A lot
of times, Siri, I’ll ask a question, and it will say I found this is.

BELVA SMITH: And
it’ll just stop.

JOSH ANDERSON: I had
to click on a website or something like that.
I know Cortana, when I’ve used it, it usually answers my question.

BELVA SMITH: And when
I asked the weather, like I asked both of them once the current temperature,
Siri did just exactly what you said. It just
brought up the current temperature and a little bit of information. When I asked Cortana what’s the current
temperature, she gave me all kinds of feedback for the sun shining and 43
degrees, etc.

This is my opinion, but I think Siri seems more robotic. I think Cortana seems more like a
person. That’s been my experience.

BRIAN NORTON: Cortana
is available not just in Windows but also – is it Windows phone?

BELVA SMITH: I have
it right here on my iPhone.

BRIAN NORTON: You can
download it to your iPhone?

BELVA SMITH: You can
put all the assistants on your iPhone.
You can have the Google assistant, yeah.

JOSH ANDERSON: There
aren’t very many Windows phones. I think
they scrapped the idea.

BELVA SMITH: I think
there are four. Here’s a really cute
thing. If you have Cortana, ask her who
her daddy is. I want to tell the
answer. You want to do a quick demo?

BRIAN NORTON: Let’s
do that. I think it’ll be interesting.

BELVA SMITH:
Hopefully it works.

BRIAN NORTON:
Hopefully it’s appropriate for all those who are listening.

BELVA SMITH: Who is
your daddy? She’s not answering me
now. In the car, she told me her daddy
was Bill Gates.

JOSH ANDERSON: That’s
fun.

BRIAN NORTON:
Interesting.

BELVA SMITH: Oh, she
did tell me. Technically speaking, that
would be Bill Gates. But it’s no big
deal.

BRIAN NORTON: It just
puts it in text on the screen?
Interesting.

BELVA SMITH: They are
both back and forth on that as to whether or not it’s going to speak.

BRIAN NORTON: Do you
guys have clients using it for any productivity?

BELVA SMITH: I have
clients that are using JAWS that also use Cortana.

BRIAN NORTON: Can you
open programs and things like that?

BELVA SMITH:
Absolutely.

BRIAN NORTON: Because
Siri will do that as well.

BELVA SMITH: Absolutely.

BRIAN NORTON: So
there are some productivity things, efficiency things built into both. They are both free. [Siri] comes built into
your MacBooks and to your iPads and iOS devices. Cortana comes built in two Windows 10,
right? Can you download it for previous
versions of Windows?

JOSH ANDERSON: I
don’t think so. It has to be Windows 10.

BELVA SMITH: It has
to work on Windows 10.

BRIAN NORTON: It’s
not the voice assistant that is located within programs. I know on office 365 can you have dictation
built in.

JOSH ANDERSON:
Totally different program.

BRIAN NORTON: That’s
what I thought. I thought I would ask
that. Interesting. If you’re looking for more information on
Cortana or Siri, or maybe you use it for different tasks, please reach out to
us. We would love to hear from you. You can send a tweet with the hashtag
ATFAQ. Or send us an email at
tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We would
love to hear what you guys think of Cortana versus Siri, maybe some of the
applications you use it for day in and day out.
We appreciate you chiming in.

BELVA SMITH: Somebody
is going to say, you guys forgot to talk about the Google assistant. The Google assistant has all the same
capabilities that those two have. Today
we just chose to talk about those two.

BRIAN NORTON: Usually
when we do the showdown, I put two. I
guess we could’ve put all three together.
The Google assistant, Cortana, and Siri.
But I just went with Cortana and Siri.

JOSH ANDERSON: If
you’re going to do that, you almost have to get more in. Alexa, you could put it in there.

BELVA SMITH:
Absolutely.

JOSH ANDERSON: Let’s
just go with the to the actually have names.

***

[27:02] Question 4 – Hebrew Text-to-Speech

***

BRIAN NORTON: Our
next question is an email from David.
David was looking for some recommendations for Hebrew text-to-speech for
both android and iOS. When I think of
text-to-speech, either that’s using the built-in reader that voiceover or
possibly JAWS or talkback, but looking to be able to have it read in
Hebrew. This isn’t the first time I’ve
had this question. I hear the question
periodically about wanting a change either into a different language — to be
honest with you, I’ve heard Hebrew several times.

JOSH ANDERSON: That’s
why it’s frequently asked questions, Brian.

BRIAN NORTON:
Exactly. That’s why I thought we
ought to talk about it.

BELVA SMITH: I think
it’s common for the kids or young adults that are attending Christian colleges
with Christian goals. I remember you and
I many years ago, had a young man that was using JAWS and needed —

BRIAN NORTON: He
ended up using what was available — and we will talk about some of those
things. He ended up working with
somebody to design his own Braille translation for Hebrew. It was quite fascinating to see him talk
about that project. He was super excited
about it. I believe they have something
out there. It wasn’t translation
software — well, it was, but for Braille, not just text to speech. How to convert the Hebrew language with all
the interesting nuances and symbols that are included in that into something
that was meaningful in Braille.

My understanding is that in voiceover, you can change the
language to Hebrew. I think that’s been
around since iOS 8, if I’m not mistaken.
One way for at least iOS devices is to go into settings of voiceover and
change the language to Hebrew. Again,
I’m not sure how perfect that’s going to be.
It seems like whenever you start translating languages and things like
that, there are nuances that are missing and things that just don’t come across
very well.

JOSH ANDERSON: I
question is — and you might have gone to this — if I change was over language
to Hebrew, and what I’m trying to read is a website that’s in English, it’s not
going to read it in Hebrew?

BRIAN NORTON:
No. I don’t think so.

JOSH ANDERSON: I just
want to make sure that was clear. I
wasn’t sure. That would be really cool
if I could do that.

BRIAN NORTON: That’s
more for Microsoft translator.

JOSH ANDERSON: To be
able to do that and then have voiceover read it.

BRIAN NORTON:
Exactly.

BELVA SMITH: What is
this listener looking for? Something
that will read Hebrew or speak Hebrew?

BRIAN NORTON: For
Hebrew text —

JOSH ANDERSON: Both.
It’s going to read and speak Hebrew.

BRIAN NORTON: I think
for android — this is a while ago and I believe it still out there, but there
was Aharon TTS, which stands for text to speech. But “Aharon” is spelled A-H-A-R-O-N. It’s for android, so you can go to the Google
play store to check it out. That does
text-to-speech for android. I don’t
believe it’s a screen reader, but you will be able to select text and have it
read to you in Hebrew. I would assume if
the feature is there in voiceover that you will be able to find something in
talkback to be able to change language as well.
I’m not certain of that. May be
some of our listeners will have some insight into that. Hebrew text-to-speech.

BELVA SMITH: From
what I’ve seen, a lot of folks are trying to do that are saying that was over
is going to be the better screen reader for trying to do something like that,
even compared to JAWS. JAWS can’t do it,
but voiceover can, is my understanding, even with RealSpeak.

BRIAN NORTON: I
wasn’t sure if JAWS had the ability —

BELVA SMITH: It has a
lot of stuff going on, but I don’t see that it can do that.

BRIAN NORTON:
Interesting. I would love to hear
from folks. If you have any feedback on
that as far as a Hebrew text-to-speech, we would love to be able to have you
guys chime in and provide us more information on that. It certainly is something that lots of people
are inquiring about and interested in.
We would love to have you chiming about that. You can do that through our listener line,
317-721-7124. Or you can send us an
email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.

***

[31:31] Question 5 – Who owns this software?

***

Brian Norton: Our next question is from Cindy. Cindy has an employee who uses JAWS and she’s
trying to figure out who owns the software.
That’s a common problem, right?
What information do I need to gather or what do I need to figure out who
owns it?

BELVA SMITH: I would
just like to say that if the employee is the owner of the software, they really
should know that they are the owner of the software. That’s kind of important. But the easiest way to find out who the
software is registered to is to bring up the interface. Click on your JAWS icon and go to help. That would be “H” if you’re using keystrokes
or just click on help and go down to about.
When you open that up, it will show who it’s registered to. It will show the serial number. It will let you know if there are any
upgrades left remaining with that particular app activation, authorization,
whatever you call it.

BRIAN NORTON: Does it
actually list of the users name?

BELVA SMITH: It
should list the users name, because —

JOSH ANDERSON: As
long as you registered with the software —

BELVA SMITH: Yeah,
when it was installed, it should have been registered, and when it’s registered,
it’ll show – for example, for us, it was show Easter Seals Crossroads. Or if it were registered to make it would
show Belva Smith. The reason I think
that’s important for the employee to know is because if, for some reason, that
relationship between the employer and the employee ends, then the employee
needs to make sure that that is being removed —

BRIAN NORTON: Or
given back.

BELVA SMITH: Yes,
that activation is basically given back to them and the employer can’t go ahead
and use it for the next person. It’s
really important to find out who owns it, because there also is important as to
who’s responsible for any upgrades that might be necessary. For example, we will use Easter Seals
Crossroads. If they owned the software
and there’s an update required for me to be able to perform my job, then they
would be the ones required to buy the upgrade.
But if I’m the one that owns the software, then I would probably be the
one that would have to purchase that upgrade.
Another easy way to tell — I guess this isn’t an easy way, but as a way
to tell the — is, is it being used on a network, and is a home or professional
version? Number one, if it’s a home
version, more than likely that does belong to an individual and can’t be used
on a network. But a professional version
could be on a network and could be easily employer’s or the employee’s.

JOSH ANDERSON: And
there is one exception to that. If the
person went through a vocational rehabilitation program, it may be registered
to them, but technically it belongs to vocational repetition.

BELVA SMITH: For a
time period.

BRIAN NORTON: Or they
sign it over.

BELVA SMITH: For a
time period.

BRIAN NORTON: The
other way I usually locate this information, FSactivate.com, if you just have
the serial number for the software, you can go on to FSactivate.com, plug in
that serial number, and it’ll actually tell you the information. A lot of times, I think we have – I don’t
know — we have a 10 user site license here because we have it on some
demonstration laptops, some staff have it on their computers, those kinds of
things, so we have lots of different serial numbers. We have one serial number couple lots of
different activation codes. That’s how I
can figure out what we have and who has it on what. FS Activate is also a great
place to go if you’re looking for the information. But if it tells you specifically who it’s
registered to, I would go with what Belva mentioned first, and that was go to
the help menu in your JAWS panel and check out the information.

BELVA SMITH: You’ve
got to hope that when it was installed that it was activated and registered
correctly. If the person who installed
it, maybe it was the IT department for the agency or the employer that
installed it, if they do not specifically put in that the software belongs to
the employee, then it’s going to show that it belongs to the employer.

BRIAN NORTON: I find
this situation happen with me several times over the years, and it was mainly
because the software was purchased — it was JAWS 3.0 when the employee started
working, and now it’s 2019, so there’s been myriad updates, new managers, new
people who surround the employee. Nobody
quite remembers, was that purchased by the company or was that purchased
through vocational rehabilitation for the client? You to the client nor the employer know. It’s like, how do we figure that out? The ways that we mentioned, look at the help
menu, go to FS Activate, look at those different places to be able to figure
that stuff out. I think that applies to
a lot of different software.

BELVA SMITH:
Absolutely.

BRIAN NORTON: It’s
important to know is it the consumer’s or is it the employer’s. If the employee leaves, if it’s there is,
then it should go with them so they can use it elsewhere.

BELVA SMITH: That
something I tell my consumers. For
example, if we are putting in place — maybe all the other employees are using
a 19 inch monitor, and that’s fine for them, but I’ve got a client that’s
visually impaired and they need a 24 inch monitor. I always tell them, you need to put your name
on that. For example, inventory gets
done by the agency or something.
Suddenly they think we’ve got this 24 inch monitor in our inventory that’s
not listed. Because as you pointed out,
Josh, if this equipment is being purchased by vocational rehabilitation, it’s
not to be left with the employer upon the separation of the two.

BRIAN NORTON:
Exactly. Don’t forget, if you
guys have any feedback, maybe you’ve dealt with the situation or have a
question that maybe this question has brought up for you, get a hold of
us. We would love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line
at 317-721-7124. Or send us a tweet with
the hashtag ATFAQ. We would love to hear
from you.

BRIAN NORTON: Our
next question is from Aaron. I am
looking for a text-to-speech app that I can use with my Google docs and my
chrome a web browser. Any suggestions?

BELVA SMITH: You’ve
got one. Yay. The important thing, if you want to be able
to use the speech within Google Chrome or Google docs, you’ve got to make sure
that that’s been turned down. The easy
way to do that is to open up your Google Chrome and they go to your Google
account. That’s where you are going to
see your profile picture whatever. You
want to click on that and go into your account.
Make sure that you go down to account preferences and choose accessibility,
and make sure that you turn on or activate the screen reader feature. That will then allow you to use chrome Vox or
any one of a number of screen readers.
But if you haven’t activated that first, you are going to find your
screen readers either don’t work, or they work all wacko.

BRIAN NORTON: Right.

JOSH ANDERSON: That’s
if you need the full screen reader. If
you are just looking for text-to-speech, I use read aloud a lot.

BELVA SMITH: You can
use read aloud?

JOSH ANDERSON:
Yes. It’s a chrome plug-in, it’s
free. You just look up plug-in it read
aloud, find it, play it on there. It
works really well in Google docs.

BELVA SMITH: And
Google docs now has the same feature that you have in your iPhone,
remember? At ATIA, weren’t you at that
session where they showed us that all you have to do is highlight it? And it gives you the option to speak it.

JOSH ANDERSON: I was
not at that one.

BRIAN NORTON: That’s
pretty cool.

BELVA SMITH: That’s
available within chrome or Google docs.

JOSH ANDERSON: Nice.

BRIAN NORTON: I find
that interesting, because a lot of things are starting to move that way. As an agency at Easter Seals Crossroads, we
just moved to office 365. They have
immersive reader built right into it, so in the web version, you can bring up
any dock and have it read to you, change text color, do all sorts of
things. I just started playing around
with that a couple of days ago, getting ready for a presentation. I was pretty impressed with what it can do
and what it offers folks as far as a really useful text-to-speech.

BELVA SMITH: You
mentioned Texthelp. Is that something —
didn’t you mentioned Texthelp?

JOSH ANDERSON: I
mentioned read aloud.

BELVA SMITH: Okay,
read aloud. That’s been around forever
as far as I know.

JOSH ANDERSON: I’ve
been using it as a Google Chrome plug-in for a long time. It’s very simple, brings all your text up
into a little box and you can play it, change the size, the voice. It’s a play button, a pause button, there is
like four buttons. I’ve been using it
for quite a bit. It read anything in
Google Chrome, websites, docs, pretty much anything.

BELVA SMITH: I think
that’s been around forever and works both in Windows and chrome.

JOSH ANDERSON:
Texthelp does, if you are thinking of —

BELVA SMITH: Read
aloud – I don’t know. Read aloud used to
be a little green icon that looked like a desk lamp, is what I recall. I’m talking a long time ago.

JOSH ANDERSON: Read
aloud looks like a megaphone.

BELVA SMITH: The
reason I was going to bring up Texthelp is, are the colleges still using
that? Read and write? Texthelp?

JOSH ANDERSON: Some
of them.

BELVA SMITH: Some of
them are?

JOSH ANDERSON:
Yes. Some are offering that two
students. I know I detect, which is a
community college around the state, I don’t believe even have to go to
disability services. I think read and
write is available to all students. I
think they have a license for any student that wants it can go and download it
from their site and use it as long as they are a student. Which is pretty cool that they are going that
way. They figured out that could help a
lot of students, not just those with print disabilities.

BRIAN NORTON: I just
tried what you’re talking about, Belva.
Got to go in and enable some accessibility settings. There is an accessibility menu in your Google
docs, and when you click on that, it opens up a whole bunch of different things
for you. Speak is one of them, and you
can speak selection, speak selection formatting, or speak cursor location,
speak tables, rows, columns, headers, all sorts of things you can do with that,
which is really cool. I didn’t realize
that was built right in. I think I was
with you at the session instead of Josh.

BELVA SMITH: Okay.

BRIAN NORTON: I
remember at ATIA, they did a lot of — throwdowns? Is that with the said? App throwdowns, and they were comparing and
contrasting. No one was ever a clear
winner in those particular throwdowns.
They were just comparing and contrasting different features between the
different devices and what things could do.
It seems to me like what was available in one was available in
others. It was kind of back-and-forth.

BELVA SMITH: It may
be called something different, in a different location, but the action and
function is pretty much the same. The
ability to highlight text and have it spoken, everybody can benefit from that,
right? Everybody. Somebody like me who mispronounce his words
all the time, to be able to hear how it should be spoken or at least how a
screen reader is going to speak it gives you a general idea of the correct
pronunciation. I was thrilled to see
that that was not part of the Google docs accessibility.

BRIAN NORTON: Belva,
you’ve mentioned a couple times read and write is an option for folks. If you’re looking for something that’s more
sophisticated, has the ability to read text, pause, stop, and have it read
chunks at a time versus single words at a time, lots of different features for
folks with learning disabilities, read and write is one of those programs that
you probably should take a bigger look at.
It’s a chrome plug-in, or you can get the full program so it’ll work
anywhere in your computer. That’s
available from Texthelp.com. I want to
say it’s a little over $100. I’m not
exactly sure what the prices, but it’s a pretty good program. I think here in Indiana, several universities
make it available to students as a free download. I know IU is one of those places that, if you
go to IU ware, you can actually, as a student, download those.

JOSH ANDERSON: I
don’t think that’s all of the IU campuses anymore.

BRIAN NORTON: Okay. Is it only certain ones?

JOSH ANDERSON: I
think it might be certain ones, and I’m not sure if they are getting away from
it.

BELVA SMITH: That’s
why I asked, because I thought I had heard that a lot of them does not a lot of
them, but I heard some of them —

JOSH ANDERSON: Some
campuses are really pulling back and changing what available to all students.

BRIAN NORTON:
Interesting.

JOSH ANDERSON: It’s
school by school. The only reason I
mentioned Ivy Tech is because I’ve worked with students that go. It’s all over the state of Indiana as a
community college, and everyone I’ve worked with that shows up on their
site. There is really no difference
between it, whereas IU has IU Bloomington, IU South Bend, IU East, IU
Southeast. Some of them do have
different programs available. If that’s
something you are working for, definitely contact your school.

BELVA SMITH:
Right. I think that’s why it’s so
amazing that we’ve got people like Google and Microsoft and Apple that are
including these things right within the programs. I would love to see the no need to install —
and I know that FreedomScientific and those guys don’t want to hear me say that
— let’s face it, when it’s part of the OS, it’s going to work better.

BRIAN NORTON:
Right. It’s only been – it was
only a matter of time. I’ve been here
for 20-something years, you’ve been here a while as well, and it’s one of those
things where we kept thinking, eventually they are going to have to start
putting the stuff in. They are starting
to think of baby boomers starting to need this, age-related vision loss, those
kinds of things. Eventually the big
companies were going to get around to it, and they started to. They really have. I even look at some of the accessibility
features in Windows now that, what used to be and what it is now, are
completely different. Windows magnifier
is a really great program.

BELVA SMITH: Speech
recognition. That says it all.

JOSH ANDERSON: Yeah.

BELVA SMITH: If you
look at that when it was first part of the operating system, it was like
Dragon, it was a nightmare. Now it’s
amazing.

BRIAN NORTON: It’s
getting there for sure. I would love to
hear from other folks. If you’ve had
experience with text-to-speech apps and different chrome plug-ins or add-ons,
let us know. We would love to hear about
those and share those with the folks who are listening. You can reach out to us at our email address,
that’s tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.
Or send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. We would love to hear from you.

***

[47:08] Wildcard
question: thoughts on Internet security and issues with information being lost
or hacked?

***

WADE WINGLER: And now
it’s time for the wildcard question.

BRIAN NORTON: Our
next question is the wildcard question.
Recently I was reading an article about how MySpace lost all user
photos, videos, and audio files uploaded to its network more than three years
ago. Their response was simply, “We
apologize for the inconvenience.” This
got me thinking about how all of my photos, all of my documents, all of my
presentations, my memories, are backed up to the cloud. That’s where I put my stuff, right? iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, different
places. What really frustrates me in
this day and age is there is not a whole lot of recourse for me if something
was wrong, and things are lost. I felt
this way couple of years ago. Our agency
here at Easter Seals Crossroads, our insurance is there and them, and they got
hacked and all of our personal data was exposed – or could have been
exposed. All they said was what I felt
was a heartfelt “I’m sorry.” And you can
sign up for a year or something. So the
people lay low for a year, and they come back in a year and get my personal
data. I don’t know.

BELVA SMITH: All that
did was give them away to make more money.
They wanted to sell us security, right?

BRIAN NORTON:
Question is twofold. First of
all, where do you guys keep your stuff?

JOSH ANDERSON: I’m
not telling you, Brian.

BELVA SMITH: We’ve
had this question several times.

BRIAN NORTON: Here’s
my thought with this. What about the
culpability of these? I just get
frustrated with the culpability of these places, these companies. Hey, sorry, there’s not a whole lot of
recourse and ways for us to feel secure.
I’m just trusting that my stuff is going to be okay. I think what happened at MySpace as they were
just doing a server migration, something that should be simple and easy, and
they just lost everything.

JOSH ANDERSON: A
couple of things, and I’ll touch on your point first. Did anyone notice that all their stuff from
my space was gone?

BRIAN NORTON:
Somebody did, because they were an article about it.

JOSH ANDERSON: Was it
Tom? Was it the guy who’s automatically your friend when you join MySpace? I was going to say, I am pretty sure I still
have a MySpace account somewhere. I
don’t even know how to log into it.
Belva, you brought up a good point about it’s just a good way to sell
you. I once tried to work for a home
security company, and our job was to go sell door-to-door in neighborhoods that
had just had burglaries. By the end of
the conversation, I was pretty sure that the guy who was hiring me was doing
the burglaries, because it was pretty good business to do that. Should there be — should they be liable for
those kinds of things? Sure. But how do you enforce it quick and if you
do, how much are they going to charge you to keep your stuff after that? If a bank gets robbed and they take your
safety deposit box, you are insured for that stuff. But you are not getting it for free. You are paying for that box, you are paying
for that space, you are paying for that – kind of to have your items.

I have things in the cloud.
They are all backed up to a hard drive or on my computer.

BRIAN NORTON: So you
put it in a physical space?

JOSH ANDERSON: I put
it in a physical space. I don’t trust
myself up there.

BELVA SMITH: You
should have three backups. If you want
to use the cloud, that’s fine. Should
that be your only backup? Absolutely
not. You should have —

BRIAN NORTON: I’ve
heard that before.

BELVA SMITH: You
should have a physical backup. Should
that physical backup be like mine is right now, sitting right next to my
computer? Absolutely not. It should be off-site somewhere so that if my
house gets broken into, or burned to the ground, I still do have my physical
copy. And it should be updated
regularly. I don’t use the cloud too
much. I use it as little as possible. Primarily because I don’t trust that it’s
always going to be there. With that, I’m
going to throw — years ago – Josh, you are probably too young to remember this
– but years ago, Kodak made this big deal about we are going to put a thousand
of your photos on this Kodak desk. You
could plug it into your computer and play it and have all of your photos in one
place on this one desk. Guess what? Kodak is gone. If I have that is, I can put it in 100
different computers, and guess what? It
does that work. Should I have trusted
Kodak with my photos? Absolutely
not. Should I trust the iCloud with my
documents? Probably not.

JOSH ANDERSON: The
other thing is, don’t put anything up there that you don’t mind the whole world
seeing.

BELVA SMITH: Exactly.

JOSH ANDERSON: Brian,
I don’t think a lot of people care these days.
Everyone found out that Facebook was selling information. Who got off Facebook?

BELVA SMITH: A lot of
people.

JOSH ANDERSON: Did
they really?

BELVA SMITH:
Actually, Facebook lost a lot of people.

BRIAN NORTON: I’ll
just say this, for me, it frustrates me because we are kind of being pushed
into the digital age, right? Computers
don’t come with CD-ROM these days. My
new MacBook doesn’t even have a USB drive on it. I can get an adapter to put a USB drive on
it, but they are pushing people to the cloud.

BELVA SMITH: Because
they want everyone on the cloud.

BRIAN NORTON: Again,
what’s to say in this particular instance, if I’m uploading all my memories to
a place, you would think safe and secure and whatnot. There is nothing that you can do. The culpability of these Internet companies,
one your information is lost or compromised, it’s just not there. Again, maybe it is a hard drive someplace
else that I can back this stuff up to.
But it’s just one of those things is like, they literally said, “We
apologize for the inconvenience.” Well,
it’s like, I don’t have those CDs anymore.
I don’t have that music anymore.
I don’t have those pictures anymore.
That’s the only place they were.
Hey, sorry.

JOSH ANDERSON: There
is not a whole lot you can do about it.

BELVA SMITH: I think
that’s true no matter what we do. The
stuff is only good as long as it’s good.

JOSH ANDERSON: For
sure. If you have it backed up to a hard
drive that you keep somewhere stashed under the bed, in your house, and your
house burns down, they are all gone too.
Then if it’s backed up to the cloud, awesome, I’ve still got them. If the cloud just goes away one day or things
like that, or even when you save everything in the cloud when you don’t have
Internet access, you can’t get anything that either. I guess there are trade-offs on all those
things. Yes, they are definitely
pushing.

BELVA SMITH: I think
it comes down to convenience and a little bit of trust. Who do you trust? Do trust Apple iCloud? Do trust Google cloud? Do you trust Microsoft cloud? Wherever you trust and whoever is the easiest
is probably who you are going to resort to using, because that’s what’s easy and
feels good. I remember when I bought my
first enormous VHS recorder. I was so
excited. My insurance guy said to me,
“Hey, you know what would be a smart thing to do? Take a video of all the things in your house
and send it off somewhere and keep it safe.
That way if your stuff gets stolen, you’ve got video to prove it. Make sure you get the serial numbers.” I did that because I did think that that was
a really smart idea. I did it and gave
my brother a copy and I had a copy of his stuff. You know what? I’m sure he doesn’t know where mine is that
and I have no idea where his is that.
But it’s been so many years ago that it wouldn’t matter anyway.

JOSH ANDERSON:
Because you would have to find it easier to plate.

BELVA SMITH: Exactly.

BRIAN NORTON: They
don’t make those anymore. I just found
out.

BELVA SMITH: Things
just change, and I think it does come down to convenience and trust. I don’t have a whole lot of trust in the
cloud. I just don’t.

JOSH ANDERSON: It’s
also important to remember where your things are. Like you said, with the Kodak, if I’ve got
all my information stored at MySpace, not that many people even use the anymore
– there may just be the day where they are like, hey, we’re leaving in two
months. If you didn’t happen to read
that, you wouldn’t know. Google+ is
going away, so if you are storing a lot of stuff in that, granted, it would
probably go to Google driver somewhere else.
At the same time, if you’re using that as your platform…

BELVA SMITH: That
raises another question. What’s going to
happen when the iCloud is for? Is a
going to get full? Can it get full?

BRIAN NORTON: They
just keep adding hard drives to it.

BELVA SMITH: Where
are those hard drives?

BRIAN NORTON: In
someone’s closet. The cloud is not an
imaginary cloud in the space. It’s a
hard drive someplace in someone’s server farm.
They can just keep adding more memory and do that, if they need it.

BELVA SMITH: If
that’s the case, then we do have a Google closet somewhere and a Microsoft
closet somewhere and an Apple closet somewhere that’s got all these hard drives
where everybody is storing everything.
When those crash…

BRIAN NORTON: You are
out of luck. I’m sure they have
redundant systems set up so that if one –

JOSH ANDERSON: A
backup of a backup of a backup.

BRIAN NORTON:
Exactly. Somewhere in the article
with this MySpace incident, they mentioned something of, you know, it probably
get down to the fact that someone just didn’t want to take the time to move all
of that information over, because it was a server migration where this
happened. They didn’t want to take the
time to have all the information get moved over, so oops, it’s gone. No one can prove that, right? I guess for me, it is one of those things
where I don’t have a whole lot of trust, but I look at where things are headed,
and I don’t think you have a whole lot of choice either to be able to use those
types of places. I think your choices
will get slimmer as time goes on, like hard drives and the availability of
flash drives. The amount of memory it
takes to be able to save that information as you continue to collect more and
more photos, more movies, more things like that, eventually you are going to
get pushed into the cloud to be able to have your stuff stored.

That is our show for today.
I want to thank Josh and Belva for being a part of the panel today. Josh, you want to say goodbye to folks?

JOSH ANDERSON:
Goodbye everybody. See you next
time.

BRIAN NORTON: And
Belva?

BELVA SMITH: See you
guys in a couple weeks. Thanks for
listening.

BRIAN NORTON: If you
are listening to our show, sent us your questions, we would love to hear from
you. You can call us on our listener
line at 317-721-7124. Send us a tweet
with the hashtag ATFAQ. Or email us at
tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We look
for your questions or any feedback you have over the questions we talked about
today. In fact, without that
information, we don’t really have a show.
So be a part of it. Have a great
one and we will talk to you guys in a couple weeks.

WADE WINGLER:
Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ does not constitute a
product endorsement. Our comments are
not intended as recommendations, nor is our show evaluative in nature. Assistive Technology FAQ is hosted by Brian
Norton; gets editorial support from Josh Anderson and Belva Smith; is produced
by me, Wade Wingler; and receives support from Easter Seals Crossroads and the
INDATA Project. ATFAQ is a proud member
of the Accessibility Channel. Find more
of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.

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